Crescent bleed 19 March 2011

NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, captured this image of the star Alpha Camelopardalis. The big red arc is a bow shock, similar to the wake in front of the bow of a ship in water. [REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech]

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I see what they say about the second caller, except there are all kinds of people in the Gulf who have spent time in the Gulf oil business, on the water, and in helicopters. I would not be so quick to assume it is not credible.

[A] helicopter crew and pollution investigators have been dispatched to Main Pass Block 41 in response to two calls to the National Response Center, the federal point of contact for reporting oil and chemical spills, said Paul Barnard, an operations controller for Coast Guard Sector New Orleans.

The first caller, around 11 a.m., described a sheen of about a half-mile long and a half-mile wide, he said.

About two hours later, another caller reported a much larger sheen — about 100 miles long — originating in the same area and spreading west to Cocodrie on Terrebonne Bay, Barnard said.

“We haven’t been able to verify that, and it would be very unlikely for an individual to be able to observe a 100-mile long sheen,” he said, adding inspection teams were en route around 3 p.m. to the site. ….

BI reports that at about 3:30 pm, the shares of the rig owner, W & T Offshore, tanked “hard”. (That was their phrasing.) And yes they are hot for cheap dramatics…

…. can’t find any denials (nearing 24 hours later from the first notice given) nor other info, guess the Coast Guard is still ‘researching’ …… as this link, dated the 19th and currently stating that: The incident is under investigation and more information will be released as it becomes available, is the last District 8 External Affairs Information SiteRelease as of 5:15 AM CDT on the 20th …

An enormous oil spill off the coast of Louisiana (yes another one) seems to have occurred over the weekend. Light patches of “weathered oil” have appeared in the bays around Grande Isle. Reports of a petrochemical sheen upwards of 100 miles long have also been described in the Gulf waters around the “Birdfoot,” the Mississippi River’s terminus where the mighty river splits into three stems, the Southwest Pass, Pass A Loutre, and South Pass.

According to the Times Picayune, the Coast Guard is “investigating that as a separate incident” from the mysterious oily pollution floating around Grande Isle. So we have perhaps two spills of unknown quantities, large enough however to force officials to mobilize miles of booms and other materials in a frantic effort to try to contain the damage?

As of this writing the source(s) of oil are unknown, but some Coast Guard officials have speculated that the sheen offshore may have been caused by flooding and dredging far up the Mississippi River watershed, carrying toxic pollutants mixed with sediment out the river’s mouth. It’s an interesting theory that stems from a sad fact; the once majestic waterway that some call “America’s sewer” is now so horribly fouled as to produce oil spills as though they were seasonal regularities, vomited up with the March equinox in some kind of natural cycle like snow melt. Oil film, heavy metals, plastic particulates, pesticides, nitrates, they all flow down the Mississippi when their moon rises, just like the salmon used to run in now mostly dead streams of other great American rivers.

The source of oil floating around Grande Isle is rumored to have come up from a well that is being plugged. Sound familiar? If you don’t read or hear about it in the news, besides here, don’t be surprised. After BP’s oil-pocalypse anything less than a rig the size of the Empire State Building going up in thousand foot tall flames is probably not going to be green lighted for “all the news that’s fit to print.” Without a New Jersey-sized oil slick it’s unlikely the national media will pay attention. What does this say about us, about the world we’ve created? …

If you don’t read or hear about it in the news, besides here, don’t be surprised. After BP’s oil-pocalypse anything less than a rig the size of the Empire State Building going up in thousand foot tall flames is probably not going to be green lighted for “all the news that’s fit to print.”

The Japan Times – ‎33 minutes ago
‎
The death toll from last week’s devastating earthquake and tsunami will top 15000 in Miyagi Prefecture alone, the local police chief said Sunday, as the Self-Defense Forces, police and firefighters continued relief efforts. …

“In the morning, the First Family will tour Ciudad de Deus Favela. … In the afternoon, the President will deliver a speech at Theatro Municipal in Rio de Janiero. In his speech, the President will discuss the deeply held values and interests that bind our countries together. This relationship is particularly important because of Brazil’s role as a rapidly emerging power on the global stage. … In the evening, the First Family will tour Christ the Redeemer Statue on Corcovado Mountain.”

[S]ince the crisis, he has largely left it to TEPCO spokespeople in Tokyo to be the public face of the company and answer increasingly aggressive questions, and criticism, from reporters frustrated at the lack of information.

Mid-level executives often have no answers other than something along the line of “We are in the process of confirming”.

“He’s making the low-ranking people do all the hard work,” said Satomi Aihara, a 46-year-old Tokyo resident. “I wonder where he’s hiding — it makes me mad.”

Taro Kono, a prominent member of parliament with the Liberal Democratic Party and an opponent of nuclear power, was more blunt about TEPCO officials: “They don’t tell the truth … It’s in their DNA.”
….

So we are going to take “all necessary measures” to protect the civilians of Libya, are we? Pity we didn’t think of that 42 years ago. Or 41 years ago. Or… well, you know the rest. And let’s not be fooled by what the UN resolution really means. Yet again, it’s going to be regime-change. And just as in Iraq – to use one of Tom Friedman’s only memorable phrases of the time – when the latest dictator goes, who knows what kind of bats will come flying out of the box?

And after Tunisia, after Egypt, it’s got to be Libya, hasn’t it? The Arabs of North Africa are demanding freedom, democracy, liberation from oppression. Yes, that’s what they have in common. But what these nations also have in common is that it was us, the West, that nurtured their dictatorships decade after decade after decade. The French cuddled up to Ben Ali, the Americans stroked Mubarak, while the Italians groomed Gaddafi until our own glorious leader went to resurrect him from the political dead.

Could this be, I wonder, why we have not heard from Lord Blair of Isfahan recently? Surely he should be up there, clapping his hands with glee at another humanitarian intervention. Perhaps he is just resting between parts. Or maybe, like the dragons in Spenser’s Faerie Queen, he is quietly vomiting forth Catholic tracts with all the enthusiasm of a Gaddafi in full flow.

All sorts o headlines… cables, electricity… and more quietly, black smoke that caused another “temprorary fleeing” and hidden here and there, despite headlines and leading graphs about “containment is intact” it is reported they are dumping concrete on the damned things.

“This is huge news, and there was absolutely no viable reason for the Federal Reserve/Bernanke to be able to hide behind the FOIA, except of course, to keep the American people in the dark about who ‘their best friends are,’ and who is favored in the Wall St./Banking cartel that destroyed our national and international economies, then of course, got paid off for doing so. ”

“In the “Faustian Bargain” series, Pittman explained how 5 percent of U.S. mortgage borrowers missing monthly payments could lead to a freeze in lending throughout the world.”

“The U.S. Treasury Department plans to wind down its $142 billion portfolio of mortgage bonds guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by selling as much as $10 billion per month.

Sales will start this month and be subject to market conditions, the department said today in a statement. When combined with principal repayments currently ranging between $3 billion and $5 billion a month, the sales may eliminate the portfolio in about one year, the Treasury said.

“We will exit this investment at a gradual and orderly pace to maximize the recovery of taxpayer dollars and help protect the process of repair of the housing finance market,””

Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by the publication of “trophy” photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless Afghan civilians they killed.

Senior officials at Nato’s International Security Assistance Force in Kabul have compared the pictures published by the German news weekly Der Spiegel to the images of US soldiers abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq which sparked waves of anti-US protests around the world.

They fear that the pictures could be even more damaging as they show the aftermath of the deliberate murders of Afghan civilians by a rogue US Stryker tank unit that operated in the southern province of Kandahar last year.

A hard-core group of liberal House Democrats is questioning the constitutionality of U.S. missile strikes against Libya, with one lawmaker raising the prospect of impeachment during a Democratic Caucus conference call on Saturday.

NATO decisions must be taken unanimously, but this week the alliance is showing greater division than it has in some time. Diplomats aren’t placing the blame squarely on Turkey, either. France is also reportedly blocking an agreement because it does not want to turn command for the operations over to the alliance. Several NATO partners commented critically on the NATO Council meeting on Sunday, saying that France, Britain and the United States were pushing ahead and not doing enough to inform their partners. Currently, no agreement is expected before Tuesday.

So.

Former University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing has been released on a $1 million bail after pleading not guilty to the murder of Sam DuBose. Tensing, who is white, fatally shot the 43-year-old African-American man on July 19 after stopping him for not having a front license plate. Two additional officers, Phillip Kidd and David Lindenschmidt, hav […]

As the Senate prepares to vote to defund Planned Parenthood, we look at the Center for Medical Progress, the anti-choice group behind the attacks on Planned Parenthood. The group was founded by David Daleiden who is seen in the undercover sting videos using a fictional name. We speak to RH Reality Check's Sharona Coutts, who wrote the piece, "Exclu […]

The Senate is planning to vote as soon as Monday to strip Planned Parenthood of $500 million in federal funding. The vote comes as Planned Parenthood is coming under fire from anti-choice activists after the release of a series of undercover sting videos were published online. The heavily edited videos suggest the organization profits from supplying aborted […]

In Portland, Oregon, law enforcement officers have removed Greenpeace activists who spent 40 hours suspended from the St. Johns Bridge in order to block an icebreaking ship commissioned by oil giant Shell from leaving for the Arctic. Hundreds of activists have been gathering on the bridge and in kayaks since Tuesday night in efforts to stop Shell's plan […]

On Reality Asserts Itself, Mr. Drake, a former Senior Executive at the National Security Agency, says he was targeted by the NSA because he exposed that the agency had intel that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks and because he blew the whistle on a massive secret surveillance program aimed at Americans

James K. Gailbraith says, IMF is demanding a substantial reduction of the Greek debt to participate in any new deal and meanwhile German law makers are refusing to approve a new bail-out without the IMF

James K. Galbraith a member of the working group advising the former finance minister Varoufakis on 'Plan B' says there were great impositions imposed on the Greek government including certain procedures that removed control from the government and placed them in the hands of creditor institutions

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump, the man to beat in this week's first televised Republican presidential debate, said on Sunday he does not plan to attack his rivals and downplayed expectations for his performance, saying "I'm not a debater."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. backers of the Iran nuclear deal are increasingly confident of enough Democratic support to ensure it survives review by Congress, despite fierce opposition by majority Republicans and a massive lobbying drive.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will unveil on Monday the final version of his plan to tackle greenhouse gases from coal-fired power plants, kicking off what is expected to be a tumultuous legal battle against federal environmental regulators by the coal industry and its political allies.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.